RABBIT TRAP
(director/writer: Bryn Chainey; screenwriter: Sam Sneade; cinematographer: Andreas Johannessen; editors: Brett W. Bachman, Sam Sneade; music: Lucrecia Dalt; cast: Rosy McEwen (Daphne Davenport), Dev Patel (Darcy Davenport), Jade Croot (Child); Runtime: 97; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Lawrence Inglee, Daniel Noah, Elijah Wood, Elisa Lieras, Alex Ashworth, Sean Marley, Adrian Politowski, Martin Metz; Mad as Birds Films/Bankside Films; 2025-USA/UK)
“Opaque nature-driven Celtic folklore mystery.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Brit filmmaker Bryn Chainey, in his feature film debut, directs this opaque nature-driven Celtic folklore mystery, set in 1976. Chainey co-writes it with Sam Sneade. It starts out swell with an otherworldly voice, “With your eyes, you enter the world. With your ears, the world enters you,” but ends badly when it loses its storytelling voice.
The creative musician artist Daphne (Rosy McEwen) and her paranoid sound recorder hubby Darcy Davenport (Dev Patel) have relocated from London to a cabin in the remote Welsh countryside hoping to discover some unique natural sounds in the woods to combine with the man-made ones for Daphne’s next album.
Strange sounds are evoked when Darcy by accident records something that cannot be deciphered, which conjures up ancient mystical beings from the forest. Daphne is blown away by it and the couple have exhilarating sex when playing the recording at home.
The unusual sound recordings express one’s inner darkness. During one recording session, Daphne records hubby talking in his sleep. The otherworldly words can’t be meaningfully used in their conversations. But this eerie discovery in musical sound is viewed as a creative breakthrough in their field work, whereby a nameless 12-year-old boy (Jade Croot), skilled in hunting rabbits, has been mysteriously drawn to their music and creepily follows them around as their forest field guide.
What results is too strange of a folklore story to connect to, that goes off on abstractions. Though the aural and visual parts are spot-on and the acting is fine, the film sputters at times and its incoherent story was a turn off.
It played at the Sundance Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 2/8/2025 GRADE: C+